


More Than a Little

by Nefres



Category: Dr. STONE (Anime), Dr. STONE (Manga)
Genre: Gen, M/M, give the man shoes, i dont know where im going with this but boy did i have to write it, look he just needs shoes, sengen if this continues long enough
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-27
Updated: 2019-10-30
Packaged: 2021-01-04 04:50:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21191864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nefres/pseuds/Nefres
Summary: Gen makes a lot of decisions in the new world. Very little of them have to do with cola.





	1. Chapter 1

Gen misses a lot of things. He misses the hot stage lights that used beat down on his face, signalling that all eyes were on him, as they should be.  
He misses clothes that are really, genuinely clean. He misses perfume. He misses his smartphone.  
He misses that first sip of perfectly chilled, almost painfully fizzy cola.

He even misses the high-pitched, needling voice of his shitty manager, who Gen only ever employed because the man was phenomenally easy to control. He finds he has mixed feelings about the prospect of that same mediocre manager being crushed into rubble by Tsukasa Shishio.

Of the _statue_ being crushed into rubble. He can't think of them as humans, because they can't be human, not as long as he's marching to Tsukasa-chan's violent beat. Gen still needs to sleep at night.

He knows enough to acknowledge that he's being needlessly sentimental. Of course he doesn't miss his useless manager. In fact, there aren't any people at all that he's cried for since being awakened.

It's the strangest thing. No matter how many thoughts pop into his mind, modern comforts and entertainment, he finds he can't bring up a single person he wants to see. Even when he reaches for the memories, the faces are blurry, remembered voices muffled behind clouded glass. They don't feel real.

The Empire of Might, however, is frighteningly real. Headed by a man like Tsukasa, that mountain of an unbelievable superhuman, it's Gen's only option for surviving in this stone world. His talents lie with people, with hyping them up and tearing them down, distracting them and changing their minds, delighting their senses. He can't do that if he's alone, and he isn't eager to be a meal for the beasts that roam their new land. It's just pragmatics. Nobody can blame him for choosing the only side that's available, where his particular set of talents is even marginally useful. Gen Asagiri needs other humans to live.

There had been another option, he'd heard. But Senku had been removed, before Gen had even gotten a chance to see him. At least, that's what he'd thought, up until he'd come across a ramen stand in the stone age.  
He wasn't even disappointed by the awful taste.

\----

Shoes, Gen decided, hours later. He misses shoes.

It was a shame Gen hadn't thought to ask for something practical. Why the fuck his mind had decided on _cola_ as the goal to kill himself over, he hadn't the foggiest. Well, not his goal. His excuse. It was even more of a shame that he was now sprinting through the forest in his bare feet, all on the slim chance Tsukasa would believe him when Gen told him the scientist, Senku, was dead. All in order to save that man's life.

At first, his injuries had been the worst part of this. His chest screamed, the pain convincing him that Senku had been wrong, his ribs must be broken, he didn't care what the scientist claimed and he especially didn't care what smug tone of voice delivered the news in. It was all he could do right now to run straight, but the worst part wasn't the scrapes or the bruising, or the way his whole body felt like it had been crushed by that brute Magma's attack, chewed up and spit out and left for dead.

His feet were the worst, after all. His own fault. Surely the villagers could have spared a pair for him, even if they didn't fit well or smelled a little off. Surely Senku would have had time to throw something together. Hell, Gen was sure he could have convinced the scientist to leave his own footwear for the sake of this mission. The most important thing he'd done since being woken up, and all he could think about was how much his feet hurt.

Every stick underneath his feet was a knife, every stone an insurmountable hurdle that dug into the tender flesh. At some point all of the sensations had melded into one, a burning that ebbed and flowed but never ceased entirely. All Gen could hear was his own fevered breathing, deep gasps that pained his chest and scorched his throat.

All of his willpower concentrated on moving forward, on moving _fast_, Gen didn't know what to do when his shaky balance gave out and he tripped, limbs sprawling. His jaw smacked into the hard earth, a gnarled root hitting his cheek and convincing him for the second time (in how many days? the number wasn't coming) that he'd broken something. 

Just like that he was motionless. The single-minded command of _forward_ was undercut by his exhaustion, of every cell in his body screaming for him to finally stop and give in.

It took several seconds of that before Gen was aware of sounds, again. He couldn't hear his breathing. In a panic he sucked in air, then coughed as the action aggravated his abused ribs. Still, the sound, and more than that the pain, reassured him that he was still alive. He'd only forgotten to breath after falling. It happened to everyone, surely.  
Now he could hear his shallow breaths, careful ones that weren't enough for how much he'd been exerting himself. Uneven and unreliable, just like Gen himself. Among those breaths was the sound of wind whistling through the trees. Life, abundant around him, beasts in the dark that he would have no chance with.

He had to stand up and keep going. They were running out of time. If he failed here, Tsukasa would arrive at the village and kill Senku. It didn't even matter if he brought his army or not. That was just how unfair a battle it would be. It was Gen's job to stop that from happening, that was why he was killing himself doing this, running through a stone age forest for an asshole who hadn't thought it important to give him any fucking shoes.

Killing himself. Was this killing him? Forget the Kingdom of Science, was Gen dying, right now? His mouth tasted like iron, so it must be blood. One of his broken ribs must have pierced a lung, and now he would die here in the middle of the forest. That would explain the feeling in his chest, and how he couldn't make himself stand up no matter how much his mind screamed. His heart was beating too hard, too fast, and Gen could feel the life draining out of him with every pulse.

Tsukasa would find his bones scattered by whatever had torn up his battered body, and knowing that man he would blame himself for allowing Gen to go alone.

He sure hopes Tsukasa feels bad about this.

He hopes Senku feels worse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I need to write more fic, so I'm considering this a practice run. Not sure if it will be two or three chapters, but.... you know. You get it. You people get it.
> 
> If anyone has any Gen-centric Dr. Stone requests, please feel free to hit me up. After exhausting Ao3's content I've had no choice but to contribute my own. I love this man.
> 
> EDIT: You can find me on discord @ nefres#1162, and on tumblr under the same name.


	2. Chapter 2

He wasn't dead, as it all turned out. The encroaching darkness never came, and Gen's laboured breathing never faltered. Eyes wildly looking up, around, and finally forward again, Gen's scattered thoughts were united by the idea that, perhaps, he wasn't going to die here after all. Senku may have been right about that.

His few seconds on the ground felt like eons. Not anything surprising. Even Gen knows that a human's perception of time is nowhere near accurate, so there's no tellling how long it's really been, convincing himself he's going to die when his body is simply trying to persuade him to rest. Thousands of years did, after all, pass him by as easily as blinking. 

But what sort of mentalist would Asagiri Gen be if he let his body win out over his mind? Mind over matter, flowers over war, words over weapons. These were his tools, laid out before him. Never mind that something would come along and kill him if he passed out here for long.

He reached out, pulling his heavy head from the dirt, getting a knee under himself and then pressing his feet against the earth.

Agony.

__

It hurts, it hurts,it hurts, fuck, it hurts.

He kept going.

Every cell in his body telling him to stop and give in, feet beating against the ground in an uneven rhythm, matching the wild pace of his overtaxed heart. He was running with the same rocketing pace he started with, the same desperation needed to turn a three day journey into two. Maybe one and a half. But that's being generous, even to himself. Every time his body jolted with the force of his legs impacting the ground his head screamed, his chest stretched and felt like he'd swallowed fire. 

This wasn't his forte. This wasn't his fucking job. Running? That was for the cavemen.That was for people like that bastard Magma, like that simple fool Taiju, like _Tsukasa-chan_, demihumans with more muscle than sense. Well, maybe the latter was blessed with everything, wasn't he? Point being, Gen was supposed to be the trickster, the illusionist, the sculpter of minds who gets to exert minimal effort for maximum effect. Sure, it wasn't as though he didn't keep himself in some sort of good shape, that was just common sense, but the physicality required for this stone world didn't exactly stop at good cardio. Even if Gen had quite a lot of that.

\--

He was so focused on moving forward that the prospect of actually arriving at his destination didn't immediately come to mind. Thankfully or perhaps unthankfully, Gen was so kindly jolted out of his half-conscious haze by an arrow impacting the dirt right next to him, narrowly missing his foot.

"Tsukasa-chan! It's me!"

Gen screamed the words without much thought, instinct taking over. If the alternative was being shot, he didn't mind being sloppy.

But no following arrow came. There was silence echoing out after his proclamation, broken only by Gin's heavy breaths as he heaved his shoulders.

But silence didn't mean he was alone. Daze or not, he'd come to the right place. In front of him there was the large cave Tsukasa-chan enjoyed using as his throne room, of sorts. Not that the man would ever call it that, but Gen knew exactly the image Tsukasa-chan meant to create, here, with the shape of the rock he was currently sat on, staring out at Gen from the dark liked he owned the whole place. Which, in all respects, it seemed he should.

A cursory look told Gen all he needed to know about the state of the empire, as his eyes slid past the ridiculously built guards at the entrance to the cave, viewing the rest in turn.

There were more people than before. Tsukasa-chan's muscleheads were still present, of course, sneering at Gen as though he were something insignificant and ugly, like an insect they weren't sure how to get rid of. Tsukasa himself had an unreadable expression, one that Gen could only imagine had some annoyance, perhaps some flavour of relief, but so removed from the normal spectrum of human emotion that Gen didn't really want to bother trying to figure them out right now.

There was a new one, piercing eyes just barely visible beneath his hat, a man Gen realized he had passed on his way in. The owner of the arrow, he hazarded a guess, seeing as no one but Tsukasa-chan knew how to handle a bow and arrow with such precision when Gen had left.

It's been three seconds now, and nobody has said a word, so Gen filled the silence as he always did.

"Tsukasa-chan...!" He had a good excuse. Gen didn't need to fake the way he struggled to breath evenly enough to formulate his words.

"I found a village... a primitive one. Got into a bit of a fight, it seems, but..." In and out. He only needed to get the words out and he would be done. Everything Gen had suffered through would be worth it.

"But Senku-chan..."

Who knew there was such a man? That light, cutting through the darkness in a world that hadn't seen it in centuries. Gen could still see it when he closed his eyes, a spot burned into memory. Carving out his place where there was nothing, carving the date into a tree as though he was allowed to have counted every second leading up to this. At the time, Gen had wanted to dismiss it as a very accurate guess, one that no one could dispute.

But those numbers, cut into the tree with crude stone, they ghosted the back of his mind and embolded his search.

After meeting the man, he only had one conclusion. Tsukasa had been right about Gen having the best shot at getting inside Senku's head, but the result was something that neither of them had anticipated. 

Far from understanding his movements, Gen had been completely overtaken by them.  
Of course Senku hadn't guessed the date. He wouldn't lie to science.

He wasn't lying about the cola, either.

"Senku-chan was nowhere to be found. He's dead, there's no mistaking it~!."

Gen underlined the words with his nastiest of smiles. It didn't matter if Tsukasa's expression hadn't changed, and it didn't matter if no one paid any mind to the mentalist flaring out his hands with bombastic showmanship as he delivered the news. It was all part of the package, it all came as easily as breathing.

Even if he was struggling with that at the moment.

For far too long, the man before him said nothing, merely staring with such force as to peel back the layer's of Gen's skin and extract his soul. But even that is what Gen wanted. Eyes on him, attention directly to his words, his hands, anything he needed.

Tsukasa knew he was a trickster by his very trade. He could easily be lying, swayed by modern comforts and grand ideas, but in this situation all of that reason came down to nothing. Never mind their imagined roles or Gen's loyalties, Tsukasa had all the power here, and Gen had none. That simple fact is all that protected his lie.

"Before that... mhm." That odd quirk of Tsukasa's, affirming his own thoughts out loud. What had he just decided, Gen wondered? 

Tell me, tell me, tell me with what you don't say. I need to know everything.

"You ran here in spite of your wounds. You must be exhausted, Gen."

And that was all. No mention of Senku. Was Tsukasa taunting him on purpose? There was always the possibility he was genuinely concerned, and Gen knew enough not to completely discount it. 

As usual, his mouth began to work before his mind, mechanically filling in any gaps he needed, made more credible by the mentalist taking no pauses to consider his words.

"Ehh, Tsukasa-chan, you're worried about me? There's really no need, I merely thought it important I get back here after being so delayed..." The words slipped out easily, sweet as honey.

Was that a smile on Tsukasa-chan's face? No, it couldn't be. Actually, Gen must have registered it wrong, because what he was looking at now was mild concern. Tsukasa's lips moved, but no words came out. No, there was only a ringing, tinny and annoying and overlapping with the man's silent speech. He found his eyes transfixed on their movement, of the way Tsukasa's throat worked as he spoke, the way his muscles tensed as he seemed to move to stand up.

And suddenly Gen couldn't make out those lips, either. The view in front of him was spotting with grey, the ringing was drilling into his ears, his world was spinning out of control and he could feel himself slipping, falling and spiralling into a darkness that was all too familiar.

\---

Shouting woke him up. A man's voice, boisterous and _loud_, right next to his poor eardrums and pounding into his headache. 

Gen must have groaned, because the noise stopped quickly after. For all of two seconds.

"You're awake!! Geez, Gen, I was worried you were gonna die. I knew we shoulda sent someone to go with you..."

Ah. That could only be one person. Fate had it out for him, it seemed. At least Taiju being here told Gen one very important fact. Tsukasa hadn't gone after Senku or the village, yet.

"I'd rather be unconscious..." Gen whined, trying to turn himself over and finding it difficult. A cursory look found that he was missing his yukata, and his wounds had been crudely redressed, at least in terms of materials. If Gen had to guess, whoever had done the job had known what they were doing. At last, he managed to find a comfortable position on his side.

Only for Taiju's face to appear right in front of him, nearly sending Gen reeling again.

"That's no good! You've been asleep for too long. You need to eat something, or you'll really die!" Said with all the confidence of someone who had no idea if that was true, but was doing his damned best in spite of that. He sat up straight once more, frowning down at Gen.

"At least... keep it down? Your voice is killing me." May as well dial up his pathetic state to get some peace.

"Ah, sorry. My bad."

"Is this some sort of medical hut..?"

"Oh, yeah! They put this together while you were away. Tsukasa had me carry you after you passed out."

And it's been hours since then. Why was Taiju still here?

More importantly, why wasn't anyone else?

"Taiju..."

"Mm? What's that?"  
Gen's eyes were on the ground before him, to where a hide was laid out to provide some insulation from the night's mild chill.

No, there was no way to tell if they were really alone. No need to take such a stupid risk and ask Taiju about Senku now.

"You shouldn't shout when people are trying to sleep, you know," the mentalist finished instead, making his point with a small, annoyed smile.

Taiju's expression shifted. Frowning, he tilted his head to the right, then the left, looking somewhere around the ceiling. Gen recognized it as his thinking-very-hard-about-something pose. After what felt like a minute, during which Gen waited very patiently, wishing that he had some ibuprofen to shove down his throat, Taiju crossed his arms. But continued looking away from him. Interesting. Something Taiju didn't want to say? Perhaps it was best to leave that be, but before Gen could do anything about it, Taiju spoke up.

"It seemed like you were in pain, so I just..." He laughed, scratching at his hair. "I was worried you were going to die! I don't know much about medical stuff, so I just..."

"Don't worry so much," Gen heard himself replying automatically. "Whether I die or not won't effect Tsukasa-chan's empire, in the end. That's just the kind of man I am."  
Not that he was going to die, either way. 

Gen was smiling to himself as he considered that, though he was interrupted by Taiju slamming his hands on his knees in a thunderous clap.

"You shouldn't talk like that! I care if you die!"

He looked so angry, Gen almost had to laugh at his straightforward reply. Almost, because when he tried, his chest tightened up and complained again at being so rudely used.

"I'm not going to die, Taiju-chan. I just need to sleep."

Taiju appeared to consider this, before he nodded roughly. He moved to stand up, though apparently couldn't resist lightly patting Gen's shoulder.

And the mentalist thought that would be all, when the light grip became tight. Not painful, Gen didn't think Taiju could _do_ painful, but it was inescapable iron all the same. He waited for the inevitable question, maybe even Taiju-chan's attempt at a threat, but all the oaf did was stare at him.

Gen stared back. Across their shared gazes came Taiju's unspoken question. Nothing he could say out loud, lest he risk losing everything all over again.

__

_Is Senku alright?_  
_Are you on our side?_  
_Did you lie for us?_

The only answer for Taiju was Gen's smile, somehow innocent and taunting all at once. Even if he knew the questions, he couldn't answer them. They both knew that.

Soon enough, Taiju stood up to leave, wishing Gen a good rest in a voice stiff and unsure.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Taiju just wants to know that his bud's okay, while Gen doesn't realize he's already one of those buds.


End file.
